Inevitable
by SadieGrace
Summary: A collection of Jamko one-shots and episode tags that refuse to leave me alone. Chapter 7: "Army of Two at a Table for Nine" - An introspective from Jamie's point of view on their payback for that Code Blue, set during the dinner scene in 9x3
1. On the Defensive

_Chapter 1: On the Defensive - Takes place during 9.10, "Authority Figures," just before the bar scene near the end of the episode._

* * *

Eddie and Maya are pouring coffee in the breakroom at the 29 when Maya rounds back to the conversation she'd tried to start on their tour that morning.

"You're still going to try to tell me you and Reagan aren't screwing around?"

Eddie's head snaps back, taken by surprise.

"We are _not_ 'screwing around.'" She tells Maya, a harsh edge coming into her voice.

"Please. I saw the way you looked at him when we arrived on scene earlier. That wasn't the way you look at your sergeant. And don't try to tell me it's the way you look at your old partner, cuz that wasn't it, either. That's why you're always sticking up for him, cuz you and he are foolin' around. I don't blame you. Sometimes a girl's gotta use what she's got just to keep the odds even."

Eddie's face has grown stormier and harder with every word out of Maya's mouth and when she stops speaking Eddie has drawn herself up to look suddenly larger than her diminutive height.

Pointing a finger at Maya and advancing on her, she purses her lips and speaks low and forcefully.

"Don't. Don't you _dare_."

Maya looks belligerent, but Eddie is not done and her voice raises with every word she speaks and every step she takes toward Maya.

"Jamie Reagan," she says, pointing a finger toward his desk before aiming it back a Maya's chest, "is my _best_ friend and the love of my _life_ , and in a few months I am going to be his _wife._ Don't you dare try make that into something _dirty_ by telling me we're 'screwing around' or implying that this is somehow about rank or advancement."

By this time, she is up in Maya's face and though she still has to look up to meet Maya's eyes, Maya somehow feels as though Eddie is managing to tower over her.

"I don't stick up for him because I feel guilty about anything. I fell in love with Jamie Reagan because he's the _best_ cop I know and the best _person_ I know, and if all of you would get your heads out of your—"

"Everything okay in here?" The subject of their conversation suddenly appears in the doorway, eyebrow raised, interrupting Eddie's tirade.

Eddie backs down to her normal height and some of the tension wilts out of her. "Jamie."

At the same time, Maya snaps upright and tries to look neutral. "Sergeant!"

Jamie offers them both a small smile, their opposite reactions not lost on him. Eddie has softened and calmed, Maya gone stiff and tense.

"I heard 'Jamie Reagan is the love of my life' and I figured I'd better come make sure it was you talking before I found myself in trouble I wasn't even aware of."

Eddie automatically sparks to life again at his joke and her eyes flash merrily at him as she scoffs, "Please. Like anyone else would put up with you for the rest of her life."

"Hey, I caught you, didn't I?"

"You had me trapped in a car for hours on end. I'm pretty sure there was brainwashing involved."

"Or it's just because I'm handsome and charming and you couldn't resist."

"It's true," she jokes, "I only love you for your body."

"Seems like I heard you say, very recently in fact, that you fell in love with me because I am the best cop you know _._ "

With that rejoinder, he reaches out to take her hand and lace his fingers with hers. It's not something they usually allow themselves to do at the precinct. It's not something they usually do within a dozen _blocks_ of the precinct, but tonight he needs her to know how much it means to him to hear that from her, and how much he appreciates her voicing it to her partner—whether that had been in their plans yet or not.

Jamie turns his attention to Maya as their hands fall linked between them, though his words are still addressed to Eddie.

"I assume your partner has been… enlightened?"

Eddie looks almost sheepish. "I guess you could say that."

Maya looks back and forth between them, absorbing the little smiles, the linked hands, and the flirty banter they've been batting back and forth.

"I think I liked it better when you two were on the down low."

Eddie appears to blush at that, which amuses both Maya and Jamie to no end.

"You should know," he tells Maya, "Eddie has never felt good about keeping this from you. I also want to be clear that Eddie is not here just because I like looking at her face every day. She's here because she's a great cop, and I wanted the best cops I could get with me."

"And also because you like looking at my face every day," Eddie quips.

Jamie smirks, but Maya is shocked to see what looks like a hint of a blush on her buttoned-up sergeant's sharp cheekbones this time as he glances at the floor, shakes his head, and responds, "That was a perk, not a deciding factor."

Maya looks them over for a moment, taking in the quiet gleam in her partner's eyes that she's never seen before. Looking at them now, she wonders how it's possible that today was the first time she imagined that there might be more between them then just being former partners. The way Reagan is looking at Eddie makes Maya suddenly aware that there is much more to him than just the by-the-book sergeant they've all see him as, and if Eddie isn't looking at him like a woman dying to kiss her man, Maya's ready to turn her badge in then and there. She may be skeptical and hard to win over in some ways, but she's still secretly a romantic at heart and the tenderness and respect that's visible in their every exchange melts away at the edges of the betrayal she'd begun to feel at having been kept in the dark about such a major part of her partner's life.

She nods to herself and makes the decision that this is a time to have her partner's back.

"You don't need to worry about me. I'll keep quiet."

Sergeant Reagan—when he's standing there blushing and holding her partner's hand, she's _almost_ able to think of him as _Jamie_ rather than Sergeant Reagan—shakes his head.

"You don't need to do that. Eddie and I would never ask you to keep this a secret for us. The people who have a right to an opinion about it know. The rest of it, we're prepared to deal with."

"A little backup, on the other hand," Eddie butts in, "when the others start to talk, that's not something we would object to."

"Definitely not," Jamie agrees. "C'mon," he nods to the door as he reluctantly lets his hand slip from Eddie's. "After today, I think we could all use a drink. First round's on Eddie."

To Maya's amusement, Eddie manages one swift elbow to his ribs before exiting the breakroom, looking like nothing out of the ordinary has just occurred, as Maya and Jamie follow, biting back smiles.

* * *

 _AN: I'm pretty sure Eddie and Jamie's relationship isn't going to become public knowledge at the 29 any time real soon, but Maya is picking up on some definite vibes that I had some fun addressing._

 _I've watched Blue Bloods here and there over the years, but it's only in the last couple of months that I fell in love with it and went back and binged the entire series from the beginning and, in the process, fell in love with Jamie and Eddie. My intention is for this to become a collection of the one-shots and episode tag ideas that have been bombarding me as I watch through the series. I didn't take time to stop and write them while I was getting caught up, but now that I am, my brain is exploding with ideas that want to be written. I expect this is just the first of many. I'm pretty new to this fandom, so I'd love to hear your feedback_ — _what works, what doesn't ring true, what you like or don't like— let me know in the reviews!_


	2. Twelve David

It's six weeks before their wedding when Eddie turns up with her left ring finger empty. They've been ships passing on different shifts for four days now, and Jamie doesn't notice the blank spot on her finger until they've settled into the couch with takeout and his fingers laced with hers start to rub her ring finger. It's a habit he doesn't even realize he has until his fingers meet warm skin instead of cool metal. Something in his stomach sinks and goes leaden. Eddie always wears her ring at home.

Mentally, he runs through the last week, trying to pinpoint if something had gone wrong and he'd missed it. Other than the fact that their shifts and obligations this week have meant they've barely seen each other in seventy-two plus hours, he comes up empty.

"Eddie? Where's your ring?" There's a note of dread in his voice. He trusts Eddie to the ends of the earth, but his experience has taught him that a woman taking off his ring doesn't end well.

He's not sure if he's relieved or not when she pulls the chain she wears in on at work out from under her shirt and shows him the ring still dangling from it.

"I can't wear it right now."

"Why not? Eddie, if I—"

"Jamie," she cuts him off gently. "I said I _can't_ wear it right now, not that I don't want to. You did nothing wrong. We're good. We're great" In fact, she's been planning this for weeks, waiting for a stretch of days when they weren't going to see much of each other so that she could execute her plan without detection.

"So, what then?"

"I did something I've been thinking of for a while. I think you're going to like it. I really hope you like it, because it's kind of too late to undo it now."

"Did what, Eddie? What did you have to do that means you can't wear your engagement ring?"

"I couldn't wear it," she tells him, "because this needed a few days to heal."

Turning her left palm over, she opens it close to his face.

There, etched in black on her ring finger, tiny and inconspicuous, is a tattoo. It's so small and placed just so that when she puts her ring on, it will be mostly covered. When a wedding ring joins it in just a few weeks' time, the pair may well hide it completely.

The shock of seeing a tattoo on that oh-so-familiar hand keeps him from really noticing what that tattoo is for a moment.

Inked on the inner side of her ring finger, tiny and precise, like a fragment of a ring itself, it says _12D._

 _Twelve David_ his mind reads automatically, the call sign still as familiar as his own name.

The stroke of the numbers matches almost exactly the shape of the collar pins that still sit in a box on his dresser. He's never asked, but he's sure hers are somewhere in her jewelry box, as well.

"Twelve David," he repeats aloud.

"For life," she tacks on.

He has to shift his awestruck gaze a few more times between her hand and her face, before he is able to respond with any levity.

"I think the current Twelve David might object to that."

"Too bad," she says, drawing out the syllables before looking at him earnestly. "You're my partner Jamie Reagan," she tell him softly. "And that was our beginning. This," she hold her palm up to him again," was our beginning. But it's also our future. We may not be riding in a car together anymore, but you're still my partner. For life."

When he doesn't respond immediately, her expression turns tentative. "Do you like it?"

In response, he twists his hand and laces his left hand with hers, pressing the base of his ring finger gently against the place where the tiny numbers lie on hers.

In lieu of an answer, he asks, "How do you feel about matching tattoos?"

* * *

 _Three weeks later_

Jamie is puttering around the apartment divesting himself of his work gear and getting settled in for the evening when the doorbell rings. Not expecting anyone, his cop instincts instantly go on alert even though experience tells him that Eddie has probably just gone ahead and ordered dinner to be delivered so that it's ready and waiting when she gets there and she doesn't have to wait for it.

But, instead of the pizza guy, there's a familiar dark-haired woman outside the door when he opens it. Surprise holds him still for a moment before he swings the door open.

"Sydney."

She offers him a hesitant smile as he invites her in and gestures for her to sit. Jamie settles in the armchair while Sydney arranges herself on the couch, looking around and observing the changes to the apartment since she last saw it.

They're mostly through basic, somewhat-awkward pleasantries, when Sydney, having done a subtle ring check, finally comments: "You're not married."

"Not yet. But—"

His response is interrupted by a key turning in the lock and the door swinging open.

"Hey!" comes Eddie's voice, half blocked by the still-open door, "Can we order that stuff we got last week from—"

She's kicking her shoes off haphazardly and dumping her bag on the floor by the door when she looks up and catches her first glimpse of their visitor and halts mid-sentence.

Nodding her closer, Jamie makes the introductions.

"Eddie, this is Sydney. Sydney, this is my fiancée, Eddie Janko."

The two women exchange awkward hellos, neither quite sure how to respond at first.

Sydney finds herself suddenly looking around at the changes in the apartment with new eyes. There is a pair of running shoes by the door that are clearly too small for Jamie's feet, a pile of papers scattered far too haphazardly on the table for his neat-freak tendencies, a vase of week-old flowers and bottle of sweet white wine that he's always hated sitting on the counter, a pink sweatshirt tossed over a dining room chair, and a row of rom coms and Disney movies mixed into the DVDs in the entertainment center. The signs of a woman's presence aren't blatant, but they're hard to miss now that she's looking.

While she's assimilating Eddie's presence, Eddie and Jamie and pass a silent conversation back and forth. To Jamie's relief, Eddie's expression is more of surprise and amused curiosity than anything else, and her silent, wide-eyed question is met with a shrug and a quizzical purse of his own lips. Jamie excuses himself from Sydney to pull Eddie toward the hallway for a moment.

"You want me to run out and get some coffee somewhere, give you guys a chance to talk?" She asks him.

"No, don't. I might take her down to the café downstairs though. I'm not sure why she's here, but we should probably talk. That okay with you?"

"You're not going to go down there and then come back and dump me, right?" she jokes.

"Not a chance," Jamie says, smiling and running his hands around her waist. "I just think she has some things she needs to say and I should let her say them."

Eddie nods. It's been a long time now since she figured out that Jamie Reagan was not, in fact, hung up over his ex-fiancée, but she also knows that it might be good for him to hear that Sydney regrets leaving him, that she understands now what a good man she gave up, that she's unlikely to find his equal anywhere else. Eddie has no doubt that's where this conversation is going; the look in Sydney's eye is easy enough for her to read, even if Jamie hasn't figured it out yet.

Jamie drops a kiss on the top of her head. "We'll go grab a cup of coffee and I should be back in less than an hour. Order me something not entirely deep fried, please."

Eddie responds by rising to her tiptoes to press a swift kiss to his lips. She really has no concerns about Jamie—they've waited and wanted for too long, been too honest with each other for her to feel really threatened by Sydney's appearance, but she's also aware that Sydney is watching them and it can't hurt to stake her claim a little.

Jamie, entirely aware of what she's doing, just rolls his eyes a little and drops another kiss on her lips, amped up from hers by at least a factor of two. Touching his forehead to hers after, he murmurs, "I love you a whole lot," before turning to invite Sydney to join him at the cafe just down the block.

* * *

"Is she okay with it, your job?" Sydney asks ask they settle into a booth with their coffee a few minutes later.

Jamie has to suppress a chuckle. "She is."

"For now." Jamie raises his eyebrows at this, but she continues. "Does she really know what that means? What she's getting into?"

This time, Jamie does chuckle. "She knows. Eddie's on the job, too."

Sydney takes a moment to grasp this. "She's a cop?"

Jamie nods. "She was my partner."

"Of course." Years ago, before she left, he would have expected that statement to sound critical—like he couldn't possible care that much about anything that wasn't related to the NYPD. Tonight, it just sounds… understanding.

"I didn't understand," he ventures in the silence that follows, "until Eddie and I stopped rolling out together what it was like to be on the other side of that, how terrifying it can be to know that she's out there and I have no idea if she's okay or what's going on. I just… I want you to know that I get it now, and I'm sorry I didn't really understand back then."

It's a good segue into the conversation that follows, a quiet, somewhat awkward recap of their lives for the last three quarters of a decade.

Sydney, he discovers over the next few minutes, is a little lost. She'd left him for a world of high-powered and high-salaried attorneys, only to discover that power and money came with a cost, and that sometimes that cost was integrity and justice. For all her ambitions, Sydney had always been well-intentioned, and the intervening years have left her disillusioned. Along the way, she discovered that the men she met in her profession ticked all the boxes she though she wanted—wealthy, powerful, well-dressed and well-spoken, but they were all missing something. While some of them could be called good men, she'd found herself longing for the kindness and quiet integrity of the boy from Bay Ridge that she'd left behind.

What she hadn't counted on was that in those interim years, that boy had turned into a man and given his heart to someone else. Eddie's intuition hadn't been wrong. She's here tonight hoping that maybe, just maybe, that man might give her another shot and one ring on another woman's finger isn't quite enough to stop her from putting the idea out there.

"Engagements aren't marriage." She ventures eventually. "Things can happen. You and I are proof that sometimes an engagement doesn't go the way you planned. Maybe…"

Jamie chooses to not let her finish that thought.

"Not this time. This one is it." He tells her firmly. "Eddie and I may not have stood up in church and said our vows yet, but we made our promises to each other a long time ago."

Jamie turns his left hand over on the table between them, smiling down at it softly.

"You got a tattoo?" Sydney's shock is clear on her face and in her tone. The tiny _12D,_ small as it is on the inside of his ring finger, is so at odds with what she'd known of this man that it takes her a long moment to assimilate the new information.

The characters, of course, mean nothing to her. She was gone before Twelve David meant everything to him.

"What does it mean?" She ventures eventually.

"Eddie was my partner for five years. 12D—Twelve David—was our call sign. I guess you could say it's kind of a symbol now, a promise that we'll always have each other's backs, always be partners where it counts."

"Syd," he says gently. "Eddie is my best friend and my partner and…my entire world. I'm going to spend the rest of my life with her and I can't wait to do it.

"When you left, it hurt and I was confused and a little lost for a while. It took some time to sort it out and move past it. But I did. If I lost Eddie..." he stops there, biting his lips, a muscle twitching in his jaw, even the beginning of that sentence hard to press out.

"The world would stop turning," he finally finishes after a long pause.

It might be a little unkind, he thinks, to tell her in not so many words that he loves Eddie more than he had ever known how to love her back then. His love for Eddie has had time to deepen and mature, through danger and darkness and self-denial into something solid and lasting and all-encompassing. It's not really fair to compare them. But, maybe telling her that will push her to move on for good, past this idealized memory she's holding onto of the boy she used to know.

* * *

Jamie's return coincides with the moment the delivery man with their food arrives at their steps, so he trades a handful of cash for their dinner at the door and takes the bags with him as he climbs the steps.

"She come to tell you she was stupid for leaving you and that she wants you back?" Eddie asks from the couch as he sheds his shoes at the door and hangs his jacket on a hook.

"Something like that," he concedes.

"And you said…?" She challenges, eyebrow raised as she moves toward him.

Jamie drops their dinner on the counter and catches her hand to pull her into him.

"I told her I have the partner I want."

Her grin back at him is somehow soft and bright and a little bit wicked all at the same time and he wonders, not for the first time, how she can be so many beautiful things all at once. "Damn straight, you do."

"Twelve David for life," he murmurs as he wraps both arms around her and links his fingers behind her back and smiles as she echoes it.

"Twelve David for life."

* * *

 _AN: Many thanks for your warm welcome into this fandom. If I can't respond directly to your reviews, know that I'm enormously grateful for them and for you taking the time to let me know what you think._

 _It's been my assumption that Jamie still lives in the apartment that he lived in when Sydney was around in season 1- it looks like the same one to me, and I don't remember any references to the contrary. If I'm wrong... well, then I'm wrong. Also, I realize that the NYPD has regulations on visible tattoos. I'm running here with the assumption that, like in the military, there are specific definitions of what constitutes a "visible" tattoo. For the purposes of my story, I'm pretending theirs are acceptable, though I really know nothing about the guidelines._

 _Most of you have probably guessed that the title of this collection comes from the song that Eddie and Jamie are arguing about just before their first kiss in season 4. My random Blue Bloods question of the day is: is this a real song? It's been bugging me. When I try to look it up, all I get are Blue Bloods references. If anybody knows the answer, I'd love to hear it._


	3. Third Wheels and Second Choices

_Third Wheels and Second Choices_

 _An alternate take on what could have happened the week that Eddie comes back to work after she's shot in 8x18._

* * *

The last thing Jamie wants on Thursday night the week that Eddie comes back to active duty is to be the third wheel at dinner with her and Barry after tour ends. Unfortunately, it's been a long day and his tired brain hadn't been able scramble quickly enough to come up with an excuse when Eddie had suggested it. She already knows he doesn't have plans, so she would have shot down anything he came up with anyway.

That's how it ends up that there are three of them sliding into a booth in the back of a familiar pub down the block from the precinct half an hour after their tour ends. Barry watches quizzically as Eddie and Jamie automatically shuffle the condiments on the end of the table: Jamie slides the barbecue sauce and ketchup over to her side; vinegar, salt, and pepper are nudged closer to Jamie, who sits across from her.

Awkward silence settles as soon as they are seated. In the quiet, Eddie starts running her fingers over the edge of the table, eyes carefully following her fingers as Jamie and Barry watch her.

"What are you doing?" Barry asks, grinning at her odd behavior, glad for something to break the ice.

"I can't find it," she mutters.

"Can't find what?" Barry asks, amused.

"Eddie vandalized the furniture." Jamie tells him flatly while aiming reproachful eyes at his partner.

"It's not vandalism!" Eddie rejoins, "I was just… leaving my mark. I'm not the only one, there are tons of them here."

"Maybe it was a different table?" Barry offers.

"No. We always sit at this one. It has to be this one." Barry feels a little stab of malcontent at this. This is the first time he's set foot in this particular pub, so clearly he is no part of the we his girlfriend is referring to, and that doesn't sit well.

"Found it!" She exclaims, tapping a finger on the table between them. Just as she promised, there are numerous sets of faint initials scratched into the edge of the wooden table, and amongst them is a tiny EJ.

After he has dutifully observed her handiwork, silence falls. And stretches. And yawns.

Barry watches as Eddie shoots her partner a quick series of raised brows, narrowed eyes, and pursed lips and he responds in kind, an entire conversation without a sound. It ends in Jamie rolling his eyes and Eddie huffing and turning to ask him about his day. More jabs of dissatisfaction poke at Barry as he watches them and responds.

All three breathe sighs of relief when the waitress arrives, though it's barely been five minutes since they sat down. She already has two beers on her tray, which she deposits in front of Jamie and Eddie without any preamble.

"The regulars for you two?" She asks, looking at Jamie and Eddie.

"Please," says Eddie.

"Yeah, thanks Wendy," echoes Jamie.

"And for you?" Wendy asks, turning to Barry expectantly.

"I'm… going to need a few minutes," Barry has to respond, those stabs of discontent growing sharper. He already feels like _he's_ the third wheel, interrupting some intimate ritual between the two of them, and they haven't even ordered yet. Well, _he_ hasn't.

They do eventually find a kind of almost-comfortable rhythm of conversation, though it's dominated by Eddie, who seems almost afraid to let any silence back in, as if she has to prove that this is not the most awkward situation they can currently imagine.

When their food arrives, what seems like an eternity but is actually only about fifteen minutes later, there's a burger and onion rings for Eddie, a chicken club and salad for Jamie, and an extra side of fries that Wendy sets between them. The condiment mystery is finally solved; the barbecue sauce and ketchup make their way onto Eddie's burger, while the Jamie douses a handful of fries with the vinegar, salt, and pepper that she'd slid his way.

Looking up from his own food, Barry watches as the tomatoes from Eddie's burger are unceremoniously, even unconsciously, he thinks, delivered to Jamie's salad. Moments later, the bacon from Jamie's sandwich finds its way to the edge of Eddie's plate, from whence it is quickly snatched up and added to her burger.

Eddie starts a story about one of their more colorful collars of the week while Jamie pours half the ranch dressing from the plastic condiment cup onto his salad and then slides the cup over next to Eddie's plate.

Ten minutes later, a handful of Eddie's onion rings land on Jamie's plate and the empty spot on her plate is filled by the second pickle that had lain untouched next to his sandwich.

Barry watches them the rest of the meal with a somewhat morbid fascination. If he brings it up, he's not sure either of them would even realize what they've been doing. He's not sure which is worse –if they know they're doing it and do it in his presence anyway, or if they're just so comfortable in each other's space, so entrenched in each other's minds and routines that they don't even realize what they're doing.

He'd never admit it out loud, but he's imagined this scenario before, having Jamie join them on a night out. It always goes a little differently in his head. In the imagined version, he's the one exchanging intimate looks and comfortable routines with Eddie, showing her partner just how good he is for her. He's the one Eddie's looking at with secret smiles, realizing that he comes out on top when she compares him to her partner, side-by-side. By the end of their meal, that fantasy has all come crashing down.

He waits until they've paid the bill and Jamie excuses himself to the restroom before he finally tells Eddie, "I don't think this is working, Eddie."

She looks up, startled.

"Look, I know it was kind of awkward, but—"

"Eddie," he cuts her off. "You spent nine hours with him today. Twelve the day before that. Who knows how many altogether this week? You should be wanting some space. You should be wanting some alone time with me. Instead, you practically begged him to come out with us."

She scoffs and tries to speak, but he doesn't give her the chance. "Tell me the truth, Eddie," he asks her quietly, "Would you have been the least bit disappointed if I had backed out tonight?"

She opens her mouth to respond, but the response takes a second too long to come. He sighs.

"Don't answer that, please." He retracts. "But what if it was him you had plans with and he cancelled? How disappointed would you have been then?"

She clamps her mouth shut, but he hadn't really expected an answer. He knows it already.

"I just spent an hour watching you two do this elaborate dance around each other that I don't think you were even aware of. You're so much in each other's heads that you don't even know you're there anymore."

"He's my partner," she tries weakly but he shakes his head.

"I like you a lot, Eddie. I think you're great. And I thought maybe you just needed a chance to get over your partner because he wasn't interested or wasn't available. But I don't think that's the case and I'm not sure why you two aren't acting on that, but I'm not interested in being your consolation prize."

Eddie's mind automatically flashes back to a long-ago conversation in the women's locker room, and then guilt smacks her in the gut because a good guy is breaking up with her because of Jamie and she can't even keep Jamie out of her mind long enough for him to do it.

He interrupts her mental reprimand by reaching over to squeeze her hand while he moves to stand.

"Bye, Eddie."

* * *

"Well, I just got dumped. Can we get dessert?"

Her abrupt statement when Jamie returns to the table makes him stop and blink.

"What? Why?"

She purses her lips and levels a wry look at him. "Why do you think?"

Jamie has the grace to look away even as he slides into the booth, next to her now.

"Me?"

"Yep."

"You okay?"

"Fine. Just… I need ice cream."

"C'mon," he says, nodding toward the door, "I'll buy you the biggest cone you can find."

Moving to slide out of the booth, he suddenly halts himself and lays a hand on hers to stop her movement. He reaches out to grab the fork laying on the table and, after a moment of searching, uses it to carefully scratch something into the edge of the table.

"Jamie Reagan!" she gasps in mock horror, "are you vandalizing the furniture?"

He just lays the fork down and stands to usher her out of the booth, green eyes a little nervous.

Before she moves, her eyes search across the edge of the table to where he was working and what she sees makes her breath catch and her heart flip. There's an addition to her initials on the table edge. There in tiny letters, it now reads:

EJ + JR

* * *

 _AN: I'm not super happy with this. I loved it when I started it, but the finishing bits were a lot harder than the initial ideas. I figure it's about as good as it's going to get, though, so here it is. Please leave a review if you have constructive criticism or suggestions. I'm still figuring out how to get the voices right for these two._

 _Also, j_ _ust in case you haven't gathered this yet, this collection is probably going to be fluffier than the two feet of snow we're supposed to get this weekend. If you've read any of my stuff in other fandoms, you may know that I'm no stranger to a little bit of angst here and there, but I'm warning you now that my Jamko muse seems to be all fluff all the time._


	4. The Right Thing

The Right Thing

 _A sequel to chapter 1, "On the Defensive." Maya and Eddie have a little chat about Jamie._

* * *

"So…" Maya ventures in the quiet of their meal break on a slow, chilly afternoon of a tour nearly a week after their confrontation in the break room.

"So…?" Eddie echoes.

"You and Reagan."

Really, Maya thinks, she ought to be commended for waiting this long. She's been very patient. A couple of days off and a couple of busy tours may have supplemented her patience, but still.

She's kept her promise not to say anything despite their assurances that it was unnecessary. She'll keep her piece as long as it seems right to do so. She's been watching them, though, and they haven't changed her mind about keeping quiet.

Maybe Eddie challenges him a little more than a typical subordinate would, and maybe he gives her opinion a little more weight than the others. But really, that's nothing more than anyone would expect, knowing their history as partners. It's nothing more than she would do for her own former partner, and there certainly hadn't been any romantic leanings there. She knows Eddie slips in to his desk occasionally for a brief, quiet conversation. But again, other than a few soft looks she catches between them on occasion, that's really nothing she would feel weird about with Javi if he became their sergeant. She's been looking for ways it's affecting their judgment or their responsibilities and she isn't finding them.

"Me and Reagan, what?"

"He was your partner. And now you're getting married. How'd that happen?"

Eddie chuckles. "How do you think that happened?"

Maya smiles, but shakes her head. "I know plenty of guys who wouldn't care about sneaking around with their partner, especially one who looks like you, no matter what the regs say. Reagan doesn't really seem like the type."

"Ohhh, trust me, he's not," she responds, turning her eyes to the sandwich in front of her before smiling back at Maya conspiratorially, "He tried reaallly hard not to fall in love with me."

Maya laughs, but levels her a cynical look.

"It's not always about love."

"With Jamie, trust me, it would have to be about love for him to even think about crossing that line."

She's never quite sure now what to say to Maya about Jamie. There's a certain level of comfort and familiarity she wants to foster with her new partner that would normally entail plenty of sharing about her fiancé. But her fiancé is their sergeant, and she's also aware of the need to make sure that her partner respects him and that the familiarity of her sharing about him doesn't compromise his authority in her eyes.

"That by-the-book thing?" She finally ventures, "That's not really about the book. Jamie… he does the right thing, no matter what the book says–or doesn't say, for that matter. And we thought the right thing for a long time—a reaallly long time—was for us to pretend we didn't feel that way about each other and just be partners."

"Until…" Maya prompts.

Eddie laughs, but sobers quickly.

"Until one day last year I got shot," she says, to Maya's shock. "The vest caught it, but it shook Jamie up pretty bad. But, we were in the middle of trying really hard to ignore us at the time and I was seeing someone else. Then a few weeks later, after I ditched the other guy, a guy with a grudge put a hit out on Jamie…" She trails off and her eyes go faraway.

The memories of that day still come with a jumble of emotions. She'll never forget the terror of that moment, that sudden knowledge that Jamie was in danger and out of her sight, then the subsequent knowledge that she now has two deaths to her name. But the day is softened, too, by the memory of long hours in his arms afterward, the quiet urgency of their declarations and decisions to not waste any more time apart. It had been a terrible, wonderful day.

"And?" Maya's impatience breaks into her jumbled memories.

"And he almost succeeded."

"But he didn't."

"I shot him. And all of that shook me up pretty bad. And we decided the right thing was for us to not pretend anymore," she finishes simply.

"And then our straight-laced sergeant took you in his arms in the middle of the street and declared his undying love for you." Maya jokes with a dramatic flourish of her arms.

To her surprise, Eddie blushes. It was meant as a joke, but Maya gets the feeling that maybe she hit pretty close to the mark.

"Something like that. Jamie proposed two days later."

Maya chokes on her coffee.

"Proposed? You went from partners straight to engaged?"

"Well," Eddie hedges, "there were a couple of days in between there." More like 36 hours, and a hazy, undefined week or two before that, but who's counting?

"Still. That's a little bit crazy."

"We'd already spent five years together by then, like this in the car every day talking about everything. He was my T.O. and then he was my partner and my best friend, and I was falling in love with him for a lot of that time, no matter how hard we tried to ignore it. I already knew almost everything important there was to know about him and he knew me better than any guy I've ever actually dated. Once we decided it was time… there was just no reason to wait. We'd done enough of that already."

"And the commissioner…" Maya says leadingly.

"He told us congratulations and let us know on no uncertain terms that he expected us to find new partners."

"And you did?"

"We balked at first. You know there's actually nothing on the books about that?"

Maya looks at her disbelievingly.

"There's not. Everybody thinks there is, but all unwritten assumptions. But the commissioner… he agrees with it whether it's a rule or not. And he expected us to abide by that as much as any other cops."

Eddie takes a minute to toss her sandwich wrapper back and forth between her hands, thinking about the tension between Jamie his dad after their engagement, the flak that Jamie gets because he's the PC's kid.

"I know you think Jamie has some kind of hall pass because his dad's the commissioner. But it's not like that. It's more like... a weight. Jamie doesn't want anything he hasn't earned, and his dad wouldn't give it to him anyway. And the people around him won't even give him half of what he _deserves_ because they're afraid it'll make them _look_ like they're giving him favors. It just makes everybody watch you all that much harder. It's like living under a microscope.

"Do you know he came in first on the Sergeants exam? He'll never tell you that, but I will. _Thousands_ of cops took that test, Maya. That's got nothing to do with his dad. It's because he's got everything it takes to be great at this. He _earned_ this, and he'll prove it to all of you.

"When it comes to this job, Jamie's going to think really hard about what the right thing is, for the cops on the street _and_ for the people in his neighborhood, and then he's going to do it. And he's going to do it whether the brass— his dad included— agree with him or not. And sometimes you're going to disagree with him, but the really annoying thing is, he's usually right."

"Hey. Hey! You sold me. You can get off your soapbox," Maya laughs.

Eddie's head snaps back to look at Maya. "I did?"

In some ways, it had been the discovery of their engagement that had tipped Maya over the edge in his favor. He may be their sergeant but, in an elemental way, he's still just a man who places the safety of his fiancée into her hands every day, and she's deeply aware of the weight of that. When she thinks of the way he looks at Eddie, she knows that, for him, she has the most important job in the house. It's a silent vote of confidence in her that she's not oblivious to the honor of.

"Reagan's alright," is all she says.

"Good. Now we need to sell the others."

"I don't think we do," Maya interjects.

"What?" Eddie rears back and looks at her, confused.

"I don't think he needs our help." Maya repeats. "He's already won over Tuna, and Tuna's stories –you know he's going to be telling that for weeks—are going to turn some others. He's got Jordan and Yong and the guys who transferred from the 12th in his corner. And you, obviously.

"If what you say is true, just let him do his thing and you do your thing. The rest will come around. They're not all going to be as crazy about him as you are. It'd be a little disturbing if they were. But they'll come around."

Eddie sits back and eyes her contemplatively, willing at least to consider that.

Finally, she nods and relaxes into her seat.

"I know you might not completely believe me yet, but this precinct is going to be better–for everyone—because of him. You'll see."

* * *

 _AN: I wasn't really sure at first if I liked Maya on the show or not, but I'm definitely finding that she's an interesting character that provides potential for good conversations._

 _Let me know what you think in the reviews, pretty please!_


	5. Trading Up

_Trading Up_

 _AU. Set between 7.22 and 8.1. In the aftermath of Linda's death, Eddie and Jamie find their way to each other with a little help from the family._

* * *

The Reagan house is rarely this quiet.

Between the necessary planning and the condolence visits and the simple need to be together, the last days have been a whirlwind of grief and love and anger and all the practical everyday things that still need to be taken care of. It's been an experience that Eddie could not—and never would have wanted to—imagine before the call came in on that Thursday morning and turned Jamie's world upside down…again. She's been by his side in this house and in this grief ever since he stepped out of the sergeant's office looking like a bomb had just dropped on his life.

Frank's house has been the center of the universe this week, all the Reagan clan encamped there. Danny is not-so-quietly falling apart. The boys are still vacillating between shock and grief. The rest of them are riding an emotional roller coaster that has no end in view. But at least they're riding it together. They're slowly returning to work and school, but they still manage to end up in Bay Ridge a good portion of the time.

In the last ten days since that phone call, she's spent at least some part of every day in this house. At first, she felt like a bit of an outsider, but at some point in this whirlwind of grief, she realized that they'd closed ranks and she'd been closed in with them, expected and accepted at Jamie's side. The place that had once seemed intimidating has given way to familiarity and comfort. Today, she finds herself alone in the study, its dim warmth soothing and quiet.

Her quiet is interrupted by the footfalls she has come to recognize as Frank's as he enters and settles himself in the chair across from her.

"Commissioner."

"I think it's about time you called me Frank, don't you?"

She nods and feels a hint of a smile lift her lips. "I'll try."

It's not the first time they've had this exchange, but her default is still the formality of rank, even though her immediate mental reaction is _Frank_ or even _Dad_ most of the time now.

"I hope you know how much we appreciate everything you've done this week, Eddie. You've been an enormous support to all of us, but especially to my son."

Jamie, Frank knows, will try to carry the weight of his own grief as well as everyone else's. He'll try to be strong for them all and they'll all let him, because they all have too much to bear right now. Eddie is the only one who is there to help Jamie carry his own, and it's a relief to a father's heart to know that Jamie won't be allowed to hide in himself and take this all on by himself. Eddie won't let him.

"I'm in love with your son." She looks at him, wide-eyed, as the words escape and he knows she didn't mean to speak them.

Frank smiles that tight-lipped, enigmatic-yet-amused smile and nods just a little. "I know."

Eddie's head snaps up to look at him in shock.

"How—"

"I'm the police commissioner. I know everything." It's a well-worn line but in this case, not entirely accurate.

The truth is that he's been watching. He's watched this small woman for the last ten days stand shoulder to shoulder with them all and help carry this burden of grief when none of it was hers to bear. He's watched her step in and step up when even half of what she's done would have been above and beyond anyone's expectations. He's watched her burrow into Jamie's shell and take on all the things he carries. He watched as she tried to slip back into the pews filled with the sea of blue-clad officers from the 1-2 and the 5-4 that had appeared for Linda's funeral four days ago, only for Jamie to clasp her hand and hold it tight, pulling her into the Reagan row by his side. And he'd known then that it would be only the first time of many that she would occupy that place with them.

"I think I kind of knew, you know?" She stutters out, her mind needing the release of telling someone her thoughts, even if that _someone_ is Jamie's dad and her boss. "But I didn't _know_ until…"

Until her mind had forced her to consider what it would be like if it had been another Reagan that they'd lost last week instead of Linda, all the ways her world would have collapsed if it was Jamie whose funeral she attended four days ago.

She'd met Linda only a handful of times, had liked her, had found her warm and blunt and strong and thought _of course. This is the kind of woman the Reagan men would bring home._ She'd helped carry Jamie's sorrow at the loss of the woman who'd been his sister in every way that mattered and been happy to do it. But if it was Jamie… she'd never escape the weight of that grief.

Frank understands her unspoken ending. He's known enough tragedy to understand the harsh light it throws on all they could lose at any moment.

For all the ways they have adopted and accepted her this week, she is conscious at every moment that she doesn't really have a right to be there. She is only a partner, not a part of the family.

"If Jamie…" She finally ventures after the weighty silence, "I wouldn't even have the right to be here. I'm not family. I'm not anything. I'm just…"

She cuts off, train of thought derailed and suddenly very aware of who she's talking to.

Frank stands to leave her in peace, knowing there is little he can say or do that will assuage the turmoil inside her. On the way out, he lays a fatherly hand on her shoulder.

"I'm pretty sure you're not _just_ anything, Eddie."

* * *

"Where's your girl?"

Danny approaches the living room couch where Jamie sits, wondering aloud at the empty space at Jamie's side that has been filled so often lately by the small blonde woman with flashing eyes.

"She's not my girl, Danny."

"Like hell, she's not," he blusters. Danny's grief, like many of his emotions, comes out most often in anger, and triggers on a hair. He's never had a lot of patience for Jamie's denial of any romantic feeling between him at his partner, but the loss of Linda has done away with any understanding he had in that arena.

"The love of my life just…" Danny breaks off, unable to finish his sentence. "Don't you dare sit there and tell me that you don't know that yours is right here in the other room. Don't. you. dare."

Jamie sighs, "She's my partner, Danny."

"And Linda was mine!" Danny roars and then recedes, "Linda was my partner in all the ways that count. If I had the choice you have, I'd still choose to come home to her every night, have her as my wife and the mother of my kids over anything else."

Danny deflates, anger gone as quickly as it came, and collapses onto the couch next to Jamie. "I think you've got to stop thinking about it like giving up something, Kid, and start thinking about it as trading up."

Jamie remains silent, absorbing Danny's words. The last ten days have been some of the longest and the hardest they've faced in years. They'd been blindsided with Joe's death, but even more so with Linda's because Linda wasn't supposed to face those kind of dangers in her profession. He can't deny, though, that somehow the burden isn't quite as heavy this time, and he's not so blind that he can't see that it's because of the woman who's walked through it beside him. He'd had a girlfriend last time. This time, he thinks, he has a partner, and that makes all the difference.

When Danny speaks again, his voice is quieter, though his works still carry some venom.

"I'd give anything for a couple more days with her. And it pisses me off to watch you two sitting here and wasting the time that you still have."

* * *

Jamie finds his father on the porch with a glass in hand and collapses in the chair next to him, elbows on his knees and stares at the weathered boards of the porch floor.

"Your partner's been around a lot lately," Frank's voice comes eventually at his side.

Up until now, the family has been relatively silent about Eddie's presence the last couple of weeks. They just accepted her appearance and created a place for her in their midst, by his side. Apparently, that reprieve ends today. There's not much point, he thinks, in trying to deflect them, and he could use some perspective.

"Is this how you felt with mom?" He ventures after a moment. "Like you just needed to be near her all the time, like if you could be in her space somehow, you'd be okay?"

Frank smiles a little and nods his head, looking out at the yard. "Yeah." His voice is quiet as he continues. "Your mother made me a better version of myself. And she made even the darkest days a little bit brighter."

Jamie glances up at his father through the corners of his eyes, "And you think Eddie…?"

Frank offers him a slight smile. "I think you just compared how you feel about Eddie to how I felt about your mother. You don't think that tells you something?"

* * *

Eddie finds him on the porch a little bit later and runs her hand across his shoulders and she move to settle into the chair Frank vacated, looking over at him with a soft smile on her face that he's only ever seen her direct at him. He feels the corners of his lips tip up into a small smile of his own. He's feels a little stronger every time she smiles at him like that.

He knows they've been taking advantage of the sympathy this last week to be more physical with each other than usual. She's hugged him more times in the last four days than in the entire four years of their partnership prior to that. Most of the time, there is no end of people around who will call them on any physical contact that isn't strictly platonic. This week, though, no one's going to comment if his partner hugs him or holds his hand. Everything in this sacred bubble of grief is off limits.

This time, though, when he stands suddenly and pulls her into his arms, he knows there's no way to explain this embrace away. His left arm wraps around her waist so tightly that it almost returns to his right side while his right arm slides up her back and into the soft hair hanging loose. His face tucks into the side of her neck under her ear, his lips and his breath warm on the curve of her neck and shoulder. Holding her like this, it definitely feels like trading up.

Standing there with her in his arms and her scent in his nose, he feels his spine strengthen and the edges of the darkness begin to lift. When he speaks, he draws his hand from her hair to cup her cheek, holding her eyes with his.

"I've known… I've known that I wanted you for a long time. But, I don't think I knew until this week how much I needed you."

* * *

 _AN: I've always kind of hated that we didn't get to see the family's response to Linda's death or Jamie and Eddie in the aftermath. Season 7 is maybe my favorite Jamko season and I imagine that Eddie must have played a big part in Jamie's recovery from Linda's death._

 _On another note, anybody have a favorite Jamko fanfic they'd like to recommend? I joined this party late, so I'm sure there's a lot of good stuff I missed. I'd love to know what your favorites are to add to my reading list._


	6. Second Fiddle

Chapter 6: Second Fiddle

When the end of 8.21 goes a little differently, Eddie and Jamie are forced to confront some realities they've been avoiding for a long time.

* * *

 _"You got plans?" She asked casually, like she just happened to think of it just now. The reality is that she'd been waiting for him for the better part of fifteen minutes, trying to ignore what it means that she'd rather do just about anything with her partner than follow through on the plans she'd had with her boyfriend for days now._

 _"Uh, yeah. To not be second fiddle," he rejoined, just a touch of bitterness in his heart as he spoke. She'd called them each other's consolation prizes once and it seems pretty clear that that's what he is tonight. He doesn't want to be her consolation prize anymore, not when he wants to be so much more than that._

 _"Hey," she interjected. "You're not," but he didn't believe her, couldn't think of any other way to interpret the implied invitation._

 _"Seriously, I think it's… it's not good for me, or you and Barry…" he deflected, already inching away._

 _"Jamie-" She'd tried to butt in, but he'd backed off and backed away before she figured out how to tell him that she'd lied. There was just a weary, "I'll see you tomorrow, Eddie," and then he was gone._

* * *

Jamie's four drinks in sitting alone at the pub down the street from his apartment when the clock ticks to nine, an hour and a half after he left Eddie at the precinct. He doesn't really feel like being around people, but he also doesn't want to be the guy who sits at home, pathetically drinking alone because the girl he finally allows himself to want is with someone else, so he compromised by ending up at the pub alone, close enough to his apartment that he can drink as much as he wants and not have to worry about traveling home.

He's never felt so tired. Tired of pretending he's not in love with Eddie. Tired of always fighting everything he feels in the name of their partnership and the good of the force. Tired of watching her date other men and not having the right to care. Tired of going home alone when he always wants her with him. It's a deep, bone-weary tired that he doesn't want to carry anymore.

He's not going to make a habit of this. He's not the wallowing, self-destructive type and he won't let his own poor timing make him into it. He just needs one night to feel the sorrow of missed opportunities before he shoves it back inside again and pretends it isn't there. One night to nurse the losses before he can go back and pretend nothing has changed.

But, everything has changed for him. Everything looks different now, and not in a good way. For a brief moment, there had been this wild, glowing hope that this could finally be their time. Then that hope fizzled and burned out in the face of Barry and _work husband_ and left ashes in its wake.

He'd been so excited to have his partner back after her convalescence. Seeing her lying in that stairwell had shaken the very core of him and his world has been spinning off its axis ever since.

He'd tried to tell himself that things would settle once she was back on the beat with him, that he'd have his partner back and that's all he really needed. But the truth is, he doesn't really have his partner back and that's not all he needs anymore. It's someone else who has her. She's in the car with him but she belongs to someone else when their shift is over, and he finds that that is the hardest truth he's ever had to swallow.

In those days after her shooting, in the wake of his conversation with Erin, he'd finally been ready to lay his cards on the table and ask her to take a chance on them. And then there'd been Barry in the hospital room and Barry at the precinct and Barry at her apartment and she's clearly moved on. If he's going to survive this, if their partnership is going to survive this, he needs to create some distance before the emotional back and forth of being her partner but not her partner knocks him flat. He's got to figure out how to back away and somehow take his heart with him.

* * *

She appears as he's finishing his fourth, sidling up next to him through the crowd at the counter and he has to steel himself against the way everything in him seems to cant toward her.

"Eddie." His tone holds a note of warning instead of its usual warmth and it stings her a little, but she ignores it and slides onto the stool next to him.

Jamie Reagan, she can see, is tipping over the edge toward drunk. She's quite familiar with tipsy Jamie. She quite likes tipsy Jamie, actually. He's warm and affectionate and a little bit more physical than usual. Drunk Jamie, it appears, is a different beast. Drunk Jamie looks sad and brooding and lost in his own head.

Watching him walk out of the precinct earlier, away from her, feeling him distancing himself from her and knowing her choices had hurt him, had done something to her. Something she doesn't want to ever feel again. There's been an odd tension buzzing in him ever since her shooting, like he just can't let go and can't quite contain all that he's feeling. She can almost feel him backing off now, closing himself off from her in a way that makes her feel like she's suddenly missing a limb.

"I went to see Barry."

"I thought he cancelled," he mutters, just a little bit bitterly, not sure he really wants to hear any of this.

"He didn't," she admits. "I did. Because the only person I wanted to see tonight was my partner."

His eyes swing her way sharply, deep and darkly mossy in the low light of the pub.

"I went to tell him that we shouldn't see each other anymore." She continues, looking him straight in the eye. "It's not fair to him and it's not fair to me and it's...it's not fair to my partner. Because Barry and I both know that as long as Jamie Reagan is in my life, he's always going to be second fiddle. Because the only person I ever really want to see is my partner."

She takes a deep, wavering breath and continues, silently pleading with him to understand what she's trying to say.

"At the end of the hard days, you're the one I want beside me, the only one who understands, and at the end of the good days, you're the one I want to celebrate with. You're the only one I always want to be with. And I know we kind of had an understanding that we wouldn't—"

Jamie cuts her off by reaching over and laying his hand over hers.

"Maybe," he murmurs carefully, "it's time we came to a new understanding—that the old one isn't working. For either of us."

He's looking at her with those soft, dark eyes and all the warmth that had been missing when she walked in is suddenly there in them, the gold flecks filled with the golden light of the bar. It's a pity, she thinks, that he's had this much to drink already, because she knows he won't kiss her like this—at least not this first _real_ time—when he's not entirely in command of himself, and she'd really like him to kiss her right now.

Instead, she squeezes his hand with hers and leans over in their quiet bubble in this busy bar to lay her cheek on his shoulder. She feels the weight of his cheek on the top of her head then the warm press of his lips in her hair.

"You're still going to feel this way tomorrow, right?"

His response is to shift his hand under hers and lace his fingers between hers, using it to tug her off her stool and crowd her into his body, til she's surrounded by him, pressed close into him. She can feel the tension that's been vibrating off of him lately slowly melt away until his body is heavy and warm and solid against her and all around her. His lips drag across her hairline before he tucks his face into the curve of her neck.

His words are a soft, warm rumble that she feels all the way to her toes.

"I'm pretty sure I'm going to feel this way forever."


	7. Army of Two at a Table for Nine

_Army of Two at a Table for Nine_

 _An introspective from Jamie's point of view on their payback for that Code Blue, set during the dinner scene at the end of 9x3._

* * *

 _"Seriously, what was that?!"_

 _"I was saying grace?"_

 _"I have no idea what you were just saying."_

 _"Yeah, but it definitely wasn't grace."_

 _"It's okay, babe, I think you just got a little confused."_

 _"I think you were saying the Our Father—"_

 _"With a little Hail Mary thrown in there."_

 _"And then she circled back to the Our Father, again."_

 _"And then it was just kinda like a super weird mashup. Like, it made no sense."_

 _"It's okay, babe. They're just busting your chops."_

 _"Yeah. It's just… I was just… I don't know... I was just trying to fit in… I don't— I don't know why you guys have to all be so mean."_

 _"Eddie, baby—"_

 _"You just sat there. You let them!"_

 _"Really, guys?"_

 _"Jamie—"_

* * *

Jamie follows as Eddie retreats from the table, ostensibly near tears, ducking around the doorway to find her leaning against the wall just the other side of the door, biting her lip to keep the laughter contained while she listens to the conversation in the dining room. Moving over to her, his hands find their new favorite home at the small of her back and his forehead nudges in to rest at her temple as they listen. He can't help but join her mirth as they listen to his family, and she has to bring a hand up to clamp over his mouth so his laughter doesn't overflow as they stand there silently quaking together.

They have to quickly school their features and take deep breaths when they hear Pop's chair scrape back with the intent to come apologize.

He takes that as his cue to return to the table to admonish his family for their insensitivity, all while choking back the laughter trying to claw its way up his throat. When she appears, he can't look at them while she speaks, has to focus on her face and her words in order to keep his smile from escaping and betraying them before his cue. He knows her, knows her expressions and her tones well enough to know that she's playacting, trying to fight back her smile, but his family is taking it hook, line, and sinker.

He always knew it could be like this. In the rare moments when he allowed himself to dream of Eddie at the Reagan dinner table, he always saw her holding her own, giving back as good as she got. Having foreseen it, though, doesn't take away from how much he enjoys it, how proud he is of her.

What he hadn't expected was how good it would feel to have a partner at this table.

In many ways, as a family they are _all for one and one for all_. They love each other and stand up for each other and there are few secrets among them for long, even if there is more than enough fighting to go around. They've tossed plenty of harsh words at each other over the years, but hear someone else do it and they'll all go on defense immediately. Still, when it comes to this table, to them without the world watching, they're not shy about calling each other out, and he's spent his share of time defending himself and his actions.

He always used to envy Danny a little bit, Linda by his side at this table, a partner to count on when the verbal missiles started firing.

He'd envied that, but he'd never truly understood it, never comprehended just how good it would be to have someone next to him that was just his. Even as she learns to open herself up to the rest of them, to find her own niche within the Reagans, he knows that she is _his_ first. He loves his family, but his first allegiance is to her now, and hers to him. She'll have his back and he'll have hers, even if they have to stand against the tide of the Reagan clan.

Sydney had sat next to him for plenty of these family dinners, but it had been different with her. She'd been a presence at his side, but not a partner. He knows the difference now.

It's not that he's often felt like he needed backup in this room, but they all have strong opinions and a hereditary Irish stubbornness that means they can sometimes go at each other with no holds barred. Eddie's been his partner for half a decade, and it's profoundly heartening to know now that she'll be beside him here now, too, shoring him up when he needs support and backing him up when they come after him in that way they sometimes do. She'll never be shy about challenging him when he's wrong, but he knows she'll always stand by him when he needs it.

He sits back now and watches as she laughs, observes the impressed and chagrined smiles of his family as they realize that they've been played. She just wanted payback, a little recompense for the embarrassment of the Code Blue last week. He knows this is much more significant than that. It's a statement to his family that they're a team now, they're making their own future together, coming on their own terms. It's her standing up and earning their respect even as she joins in the traditions and in the laughter. She's no shrinking wallflower that will sit and just take whatever they give, no timid stranger in their midst to be tiptoed around, just a sister, aunt, daughter, granddaughter who'll give back as good as she gets. And soon—not soon enough, but soon—he'll add wife to that list.

She said she didn't want to disappear. In his eyes, she's the brightest thing in the room.

* * *

 _AN: This is one of my favorite Reagan dinner table scenes. In addition to just being a lot of fun, I feel like it's a pivotal point in Eddie finding her place within the Reagans as well as Eddie and Jamie establishing themselves as their own unit within the larger family unit. I'd love to hear your thoughts in the reviews! Both on this particular scene and on any other pivotal moments in their relationship you might like to see added to this collection._


End file.
